


Original Work: The Sixth Floor

by thatwriterlady



Series: Original Works By Me [1]
Category: Original Work, Uncategorized Fandoms - Fandom
Genre: Darkness, Evil, Horror, Short Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 09:48:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7356124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatwriterlady/pseuds/thatwriterlady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jake moves into his new apartment he thinks everything is great, until he starts meeting his neighbors.  Every one he meets is more than just a little strange.  And then there's the scratching under the floor boards...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know, those of you that are subscribed, you're probably confused right now. I write Destiel, so what is this?! Well, once upon a time, before I started writing fan fics, I actually wrote short stories, all of which were horror. It's funny how my writing preferences have changed, lol. I now write LGBQTA stories and books as well as horror. This one, it's relatively new. I wrote it to enter it into a contest earlier this year, but I didn't win. Oh well. So I am posting it here. I do hope that those that read it like it. Enjoy!

[](http://www.pizap.com/image/707476471pizapw1467357013.jpg)  
[](http://www.pizap.com/u/707476471) []()

"Welcome to the building. You're the new tenant in seven forty, right?"

 

Jake turned to see an elderly man walking over to stand next to him as he waited for the elevator."Uh, yeah." He smiled politely and the man smiled back.

 

"I'm Victor Tepish. Nice to meet you." The man extended a hand in greeting and Jake took it, shaking it firmly. The guy had a strong grip for looking like he was pushing seventy, if he wasn't already there.

 

"Jake Winters. Nice to meet you too. Are you on seven too?" he asked.

 

"No, I'm on nine, but there's only a handful of apartments currently available, so I assumed that since you're at the elevator, you're not in one oh six," Victor grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellowing teeth.

 

"Ah, ha ha, yeah." Jake laughed nervously and turned his attention back to the elevator. What was taking it so long?

 

"So have you been up to the roof yet? There's a greenhouse up there that the tenants sort of co-op. I grow roses there," Victor said.

 

"Um, no, I wasn't aware that there was one," Jake admitted.

 

"Sure is. There's space available. If you find yourself wanting to grow your own stuff just go see Gertrude in four nineteen. She runs the greenhouse."

 

Jake nodded. "I'll do that." The elevator still wasn't there.

 

"Have you met your neighbors yet?" Victor asked.

 

"No, not really. I'm still unpacking and getting settled in," Jake replied.

 

"You'll find that this is a pretty quiet building to live in. Walls are thick, cinder block. Don't make them like this anymore." Victor patted the wall for emphasis.

 

"It has been pretty quiet. The landlord told me the lady in the next apartment has a piano that she plays regularly, but I've only barely heard it, and only when I open the door to step into the hall. I've heard some thumping in the apartment downstairs, but otherwise it's been really quiet. A lot better than my last place," Jake said. Victor's friendly expression disappeared, replaced by something Jake couldn't quite figure out.

 

"There are no tenants below you," the man said.

 

"Well, someone's been moving around down there. It's not too bad though."

 

Victor shook his head and took a step closer. "You don't understand. No one is ever on the sixth floor. The elevator doesn't stop there, and no one lives on that floor. I don't know what you think you're hearing, but there is _nothing_ on the sixth floor."

 

Jake frowned, suddenly uncomfortable. He didn't have anything to say to that, and thankfully the elevator doors opened right then. He stepped in. So did Victor."You said you're on nine?" he asked. 

 

The old man nodded as he moved to the back of the elevator. Jake noticed he wore a cross around his neck and was grasping it. He pressed the number for each of their floors and leaned against the wall as the doors slid shut and the elevator slowly started crawling upwards. As they edged closer to the sixth floor he noticed the way Victor's breathing picked up and his grip on the cross was now combined with a soft muttering of The Lord's Prayer. As it slid past the sixth floor the old man made the sign of the cross and exhaled. When the doors slid open on seven he spoke up.

"It was nice meeting you, Jake. I hope we see one another again."

 

Jake nodded as he stepped out of the elevator. As he started for his apartment the doors slid shut behind him and he shuddered. He hoped he never saw that man again.


	2. Chapter 2

Jake had finally finished unpacking and was settling into his apartment, but he had run into Victor two more times over the last couple of weeks, and he wasn't the only odd neighbor he seemed to have. The lady with the piano turned out to be just as weird. It was late on a Saturday night as he was coming home from having met up with friends at a local bar when he met Louise. As he was humming to himself approaching his apartment, he saw her in the hall. A quick check of his watch told him it was after three in the morning. She was standing with her head tilted, listening to something, though the only thing he heard was his own off-key voice. He quieted and paused at his apartment door to look at her. She noticed and stood up straight, smiling politely. He was starting to wonder if he was the youngest person in this building because this woman had to be at least sixty five. She stepped forward, offering her hand. 

"Hello. So you're my new neighbor. My piano isn't bothering you, is it?" she asked. He shook her hand. 

"No, ma'am, I don't hear it at all," he assured her.

"Please, call me Louise. What's your name?"

"I'm Jake," he replied.

"Welcome to the building Jake, how do you like it so far?" she asked.

"It's nice. Very quiet. I like that," he replied. She nodded but it was clear she was thinking about something else. Again she cocked her head.

"Do you hear that?"

He mirrored her posture, tilting his own head and listening. Just as he was about to open his mouth and say no, he hadn't heard anything, there came a scraping noise.

"What is that?" he asked. 

She shook her head, and it unnerved him to see that she actually looked scared."It's coming from the sixth floor. They're active tonight," she murmured.

"I'm sorry, what?" He frowned as something thumped under his feet. "I spoke to Victor, and he said no one lives on the sixth floor."

Louise nodded slowly. "And he's right. No one does live down there. Doesn't mean the floor isn't occupied, though."

"What does that mean? The building has rats?" He didn't want to live in another pest-infested building.

"No, there are no rats in this building. I would be cautious riding the elevator. You don't want the door to open on the sixth floor." Her tone was ominous and left him with goosebumps, though he wasn't really sure why.

"I thought the doors didn't open on that floor," he said. She eyed him for a moment.

"Mostly they don't. When they do, people don't come off that elevator. You'll want to keep that in mind. Have a good night, Jake, it was nice meeting you."

She went into her apartment, leaving him standing there still trying to process what she'd said. At the end of the hall the elevator dinged and the doors opened. No one stepped off. Jake wasn't sure why but that made his skin crawl, and he couldn't get into his apartment fast enough. He was starting to think that either there was something to these stories or all his neighbors were nuts. He hadn't made up his mind yet.


	3. Chapter 3

Riding the elevator became nerve wracking for Jake. He grew nervous every time he stepped foot inside the box, and until it had risen above the sixth floor, he held his breath, reciting whatever prayers he could remember from childhood until the doors opened on his own floor. Three months in, and he was actually starting to look for a new apartment. He wasn't necessarily a superstitious person, but the thumps and scrapes he heard each night, the ones that seemed to follow him from room to room, they were unnerving. He'd gone down to speak with the landlord who had seemed so friendly and easygoing upon the initial tour of the apartment, but when confronted about the stories he kept hearing about the sixth floor the man suddenly became cold and short-tempered. Jake recognized that the man was scared, and that did nothing to ease his own fears. It was a Friday night in August, and the heat outside was too intense to want to venture outside his apartment, so he decided to invite a few friends over to play video games. Joel and David showed up with pizza and beer, and they settled in for a night of gaming. When something thumped down on the sixth floor, Jake jumped. Both of his friends noticed.

"Are your neighbors always so loud?" David asked.

"Nah, that's not a neighbor. There's no one down there." Jake was busy trying to keep his car on the track in the game and not pay attention to the scraping noises coming from directly under where they were sitting.

"No one lives in that apartment? Are they remodeling or something?" David's car crashed so he lowered his controller and looked over at Jake.

"Nah, man. No one lives on the sixth floor. No remodeling, nothing. No one's down there," Jake muttered as he slid his car from sixth into fifth place.

Something below them thumped louder. Jake jumped and his car flew off the track, crashing and erupting into flames.

"Damn it!" He threw down his controller in frustration.

"Maybe it's air in the pipes," Joel suggested. Something scraped across the floor right beneath their feet. It sounded like nails, and Jake pulled his feet up onto the couch.

"That was not air in the pipes." David was looking down at the floor frowning. "Someone's down there."

"My neighbors are all scared of the sixth floor. Every single one I've met, they all get super nervous if I mention it, and the few I've stopped long enough to actually talk to are all convinced that there's something evil on that floor, though no one can say what it is. I've been told that the elevator doors don't open on the sixth floor, but if they do, the people on the elevator disappear, never to be seen from again," Jake explained. Both Joel and David were looking at him skeptically.

"Dude, you know that's some urban legend type crap you're spouting there, right?" Joel asked.

"Yeah, that's why I decided to look it up. I didn't believe it either, but..."

Something thumped loud enough under them that an empty beer can on the coffee table jumped and fell over.

"But what?" David asked.

"I found some articles online, and then I went to the library to look it up further. This place? It used to be a hotel. It was converted into apartments in the seventies. Most of the other tenants have lived here since that time. Anyway, I was curious, so I looked into it and there have been nineteen disappearances here. Nineteen people over the last forty or so years. The last one disappeared two years ago, a nineteen-year-old girl named Abby. Lived up on eight and was coming home from school one day, got in the elevator, never got off. There are witnesses that saw her get in, and people waiting to come down on this floor said the elevator was empty when they got on."Joel snorted and shook his head.

"So that leaves, what, floors two through five where someone could have grabbed her? It sounds like a bunch of superstitious nonsense. I'd be more concerned that you have a serial killer than I would be that you have ghosts." His friend eyed him for a moment. "You're not feeding into this nonsense, are you?"

"Nah, not really. But how else do you explain the noises downstairs?" Jake asked.

"My bet is you have raccoons. Sounds too big to be rats. Critters like that get into buildings all the time, and this place is pretty old," Joel replied. That actually made sense.

"Damn, you think there's a killer living here?"

Joel shrugged. "That makes a lot more sense than evil spirits or ghosts, or whatever other nonsense your neighbors are crying about."

He was right. The scratching sound downstairs did sound like it could be raccoon claws. Maybe they had worked themselves into the space between the floor and ceiling. He let out a small laugh and shook his head. How stupid he'd been feeding into all the stories.

"Yeah, you're right. But I'm going to carry my switchblade just in case one of my neighbors is some nutcase. My vote is for Victor, the creepy guy up on nine."

His friends laughed and David reset the game. "Ok, it's Joel's turn now..."


	4. Chapter 4

For a week the elevator was out of commission, and Jake was forced to take the stairs. He didn't think much about the sixth floor, not with how his muscles burned and his shirt clung to his body as he climbed up and down the stairs twice every day in the stifling, hot box that was the stairwell. When the elevator was finally declared fixed he wanted to sob with relief. There were two stairwells and they were both over ninety degrees, with no moving air, and miserable to use. The elevator at least had air moving, even if it wasn't air conditioned.

That Saturday Jake had gone to visit his mother, spending the day taking her shopping and out for lunch, and when he got back to his building and saw that he could use the elevator again he fist pumped the air in a silent celebration. He hit the up button and leaned against the wall to wait. The lobby was empty, the street outside quiet, and he let his mind wander to what things he needed to get done before he went back to work Monday. As he was debating on whether he needed to get groceries, the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. He stepped inside and hit the button for the seventh floor. Fixing the elevator had apparently not included making it move any faster and it slowly crawled upward, ticking off the floor numbers as it went.

Two

Three

Four

Five

As it crept towards the sixth floor Jake felt a sliver of fear slide down his spine, but he shook it off. Joel was right. It was stupid to think there was any truth to the stories about that floor. He was an adult, twenty eight years old, and he liked to think he had good common sense. Letting out a small laugh at his own silliness, he shook his head.

Six

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. A deep blackness stretched before him, and he felt his heart leap into his throat. He hit the button to close the doors over and over, but they weren't closing. Something in the deep darkness moved, and it was darker than anything else around it."Come on....please..." He whined as he continued to slap the button. Something reached out of the inky blackness and wrapped around his ankle.The last thing he thought before he was dragged into that darkness was that he should have listened to his neighbors after all.

**Author's Note:**

> To those that read this, thank you for that, and I hope you liked it.


End file.
